DOJ pushes to indict former Cuban leader Raul Castro, raising fears of invasion

The Department of Justice plans to announce charges against Cuba’s former President Raul Castro, possibly next Wednesday according to sources. Raul, 94, is a brother of the late revolutionary leader and longtime Cuban President Fidel Castro. To this day, the brothers are both iconic figures in Cuba and are considered heroes of Cuba’s Revolution (1953-1959).

While his brother ruled Cuba for nearly 50 years, Raul was in charge of state security matters as Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Raul took over as president in 2008 due to Fidel’s failing health, about eight years before Fidel’s death in 2016 at age 90. Raul stepped down as president in 2018. He was succeeded by Miguel Díaz-Canel who remains in office.

The incident at the center of the indictment took place in 1996 while Fidel was still President and Raul was serving as armed forces minister. In February of that year, Cuba’s air force shot down two small civilian planes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles resident in the US. The attack killed four men on the two planes.

What was Brothers to the Rescue?

While Brothers to the Rescue carried out humanitarian work searching for rafts of Cuban refugees in open water, they also carried out anti-Castro propaganda missions by dropping leaflets over Cuban airspace. A member of the group who was captured in Cuba also claimed the group had also conducted reconnaissance for a potential attack and had planned to smuggle weapons into Cuba. US officials dismissed these claims.

The Castro brothers clearly considered the group troublesome and had issued military orders to stop the flights. Neither Fidel nor Raul is known to have specifically ordered that they be shot down. Nevertheless, the Castro regime claimed the incident as a case of legitimate defense of Cuban airspace. However, an international body sided with the US’s position that the planes were shot down over international waters.

Another Venezuela?

News of the indictment has raised fears that the Trump administration is plotting at least a limited military action in Cuba in the near future. The situation has drawn comparisons to the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro in Caracas this year. The US has characterized that operation as a police action to bring Maduro and his wife to the US to face drug trafficking charges.

President Trump has also publicly threatened similar action in Cuba on numerous occasions. He has often touted the success of the operation in Venezuela and reporting suggests it was that success that emboldened him to take military action against Iran. In contrast to the Venezuela operation, US military action in Iran has been neither quick nor effective in bringing in new leadership that is more pliant to US demands. With Iranian negotiations at a standstill and tensions remaining high in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump seems eager to move on and find a political win closer to home.

Simultaneously, the US has been conducting negotiations with Cuba’s leadership. CIA director John Ratcliffe visited Cuba this week as part of these negotiations. The US is reportedly offering millions in humanitarian aid as well as significant agricultural and infrastructure support. In exchange, the US is essentially demanding that Cuba give up its communist model of government, give favorable deals to American companies, and compensate Americans and American companies whose assets and property were seized during the 1950s revolution.

These negotiations follow a months-long US energy blockade of Cuba which has partially collapsed the island’s power grid and brought extreme misery to its people.